News this week included: “It won’t happen,” responds Lawrence Wong, prime minister, to a journalist’s question about restricting fuel exports, as Singapore and Australia commit to keep LNG and diesel flowing; the SDP’s Paul Tambyah calls for petrol tax cuts and a temporary windfall levy on oil and gas firms; “Lumpy medical spending and medisave limits”, explainer by the WP’s Jamus Lim, calling for greater flexibility with the scheme; Students for Palestine Singapore hold an anti-imperalist rally at Hong Lim Park; school bullies will face punishments akin to those for vaping, including suspension and caning; barred by their employers from home Wi-Fi, domestic workers find other ways to get online; an ST multimedia piece showing how terrifyingly fast AI chatbots can identify you through your online behaviour; BlueSG, the defunct, point-to-point, car-sharing service, attempts a reboot; the iconic satellite dishes along the BKE are dismantled; a Geylang restaurant faces a backlash after charging a family S$2 for “outside drinks” (two kids were drinking from a mineral water bottle); Japanese Keisuke Honda and Welshman Kai Whitmore join the S League, with the latter open to citizenship; and poor Gan Kim Yong, deputy prime minister, who, having suggested that Singaporeans should take more public transport and switch from aircons to fans amidst the energy crisis, will likely now be mocked whenever he doesn’t.
Society: PET peeves
It begins with crude oil. Refined and reformed, its intermediates are used to produce two unassuming substances: purified terephthalic acid (PTA) and monoethylene glycol (MEG). The former is fine white powder; the latter is a clear, odourless, and slightly viscous syrup. Blended into a slurry, the two are put under heat and pressure from reactor to reactor before being cooled into polyethylene terephthalate (PET) resin. This “father of plastics” is found in food packaging, bottles, tubes, and also in the material that forms polyester fibre, fast fashion’s main staple.
With the war on Iran impacting supplies of crude oil, the price of plastic has and will rise. “Our plastic pallet [used in packaging] suppliers have doubled prices and even cancelled contracts because they literally cannot commit to the prices before the war,” Chayadhorn “Ing” Kitiyadisai said in a video explainer on TikTok. Kitiyadisai is the founder of Ingu Skin, a Thai science-driven skincare brand launched in 2022.
Indeed, manufacturers have been hit with rocketing production, utility, and transport costs—forced between cancelling and potentially losing customers, or committing to orders while facing a “sharp profit squeeze”. Some South Asian garment makers are absorbing much of the higher energy and logistics costs as they fulfill orders placed months ago. But once inventory is depleted and new orders placed, consumers can expect a 10 to 15 percent rise in clothing prices. Malaysians meanwhile, are facing a shortage of Farm Fresh milk at supermarkets. The brand clarified that a lack of PET resin has forced it to shift more products into paper cartons and ultra-high temperature (UHT) packaging. This plastic squeeze has also been felt by a local soya sauce maker.
The rise in PET costs has increased demand for recycled plastic. While some early adopters recognise recycled plastic as a hedge against future supply squeezes, the broader market is still adopting strategies that prioritise short-term optimisation over supply security. Still, any industrial waste reduction is welcome; already, the war has had a catastrophic impact on the environment. For consumers too, this is an opportunity to become more conscious of our waste production, as the war serves up daily reminders of the deleterious impact choices made thousands of kilometres away by people unknown can have on us.
Sport: Preserving pickle
“The tigers that are roaming about the Bukit Timah and Sirangoon districts have not yet been killed,” moaned a correspondent to The Straits Times. “Where is the sporting pluck of Singapore gone? Time was when the kubber [news] of a stripes was received with joy...Time is, when…playing at lawn tennis is considered the highest sport.”
“Apparently young Singapore prefers to shine at niminy piminy lawn tennis, rather than to witch the world with noble horsemanship,” wrote another, similarly overcome with nausea at the sight of the new elbowing the old in the stomach. Across the late 19th century colonial world, tennis seemed to pop up from nowhere—a rojak of croquet, rackets (a squash precursor) and courte-paume (best imagined as doing calculus and trigonometry while haring after a ball with a racket). The sudden popularity of something seemingly so trifling caused significant dyspepsia. Some, like the two above, felt sport wasn’t sport unless life and limb were in perennial peril. Tennis was too safe, too effete. On the other hand, there were those who harrumphed at an enterprise so devoid of morals and good taste that it enabled young women to flounce around unladylike in public. Even those not opposed to women playing tennis in principle worried about the game being too taxing for the feminine mind and body. Sadly for them, tennis’ was no transient virality. Today it’s among the most popular sports in the world.
